For The Love Of Dog: I was your silver lining, but now I’m gold

A year ago today Dylan and I were trudging through snow and mud looking for Elizabeth and Mary our darling yak escape artists. I would also just like to point out that Mother Nature is a cruel and sadistic woman for making people contend with both mud and snow. There should only be one horrifying example of nature’s cruelty at a time. Though to be fair, the combination of the two allowed us to track the yaks for miles, so there is a kind of silver lining. If following bovine for days can be considered a silver lining.

This year, all critters are home so I only have to contend with mud and snow so far as the pastures.

Last week Calpernia delivered her twin lambs, they were weeks too early and were born dead. Which was a really great way for me to once again recognize that my cold black heart is neither cold enough nor black enough to farm successfully. I mourned the loss of those little babes. Now if we’re to see any happy bouncy lambs this year it is all riding on Scout who so far is 0 for 1. I’ve moved the sheep out of the lambing pens as my extensive googling has indicated that sheep unused to confinement are more likely to experience difficulty at lambing if they are confined. I figured we had nothing to lose really. Scout has lambed once in the pens and it was incredibly unsuccessful. Really how could it go worse than it went with Nugget? I should never say that, but I’ve said it. So likely now the sheep will surprise me with another horrible trauma I have yet to fathom. Cher be with me.

JoJos calf is a beautiful bouncy boy and I am endlessly thrilled at having another precious baby to love. JoJo, of course is not thrilled. I think it’ll grow on her. The yaks and cows are living happily together thus far. They didn’t give us much of a choice in that department. Eventually a person gets tired of broken fences and hooves caught in fences and just allows the herd to be together and fight it out.

Last week after Juicy was born I had seperated the yaks and cows because the yaks were treating baby as if he was a throw toy, scooping him in their horns and launching him into the air. They did the same last year to Jack the baby yak, and I was determined to change things this year. That worked well for approximately two days, then Dylan came and got me out of bed in the middle of the night to help him. The yaks had broken the fence between them and were in with the cows, all but baby Jack who was stuck in the fence. Of course. Why didn’t we see some kind of chaos ensuing with separation. You would think we would have learned by now, NOTHING GOES ACCORDING TO PLAN! NOT EVER! We spent a couple of hours in the rain chasing bovine through knee deep snow. (Another example of nature’s cruelty. Rain and snow, come on, for serious?!) eventually we got them seperated once again. The following morning I watched the yaks ramming the fence trying unsuccessfully (Thank Cher) to break the fence again. They were seperated until after Juicy had been tagged, vaccinated and banded. Once that was complete I opened the gates and prepared for a battle. There wasn’t one. All were friends. Full of surprises.

This is Dylan post bovine battle looking like a cool farmer despite the rain and snow. I on the other hand looked like a drowned sewer rat. There are no pictures of me for that reason.

It is unendingly confusing for me, when they’re together they appear to hate each other, when seperated they seem to want nothing more than to be together again. Not unlike some families I guess. Nonetheless they are reunited and the yaks have stopped hunting baby Juicy. We’re expecting Elizabeth to calf in the next couple of weeks. I’m truly hoping her calving goes the same as her sisters did last year. One day no baby, the next day, a happy healthy nursing baby.

We bought a squeeze a couple weeks ago, so our lives should get exponentially easier after we build a chute and corral for the critters. We may even be able to properly vaccinate and tag the animals. Which will be an exceptional amount of stress off us.

Spring seems to have finally arrived, the dugouts in the pastures are thawing, the barn and shop have flooded, so it seems we really have made it through the winter.

I did the spring clean of the chicken coop, a most unpleasant task. Last year I remember being excited about it. It was disgusting and miserable but I recall how thrilled I was at the prospect of getting chickens of our own. So thrilled I didn’t even loathe cleaning a coop full of chicken poop from chickens I didn’t even own. This year, the novelty had worn off. I was no longer thrilled.

Right : last year, fired up

Left: this year, misery

It is done now though, and I can resume cleaning the coop regularly. It is far easier to clean it after a couple weeks than after months of things being frozen. Horror. Disgusting.

Here are some photos of the last couple weeks on the farm.